January 20, 2011

In the study reported at the link, the students who wrote a free-form essay on what they remembered from what they'd read learned the material best, even though they felt least confident that they had remembered well.

24 comments:

In first year of law school, I did detailed typed outlines of every course I took to prepare for exams. Then I did shorter outlines of the outlines, mostly from memory, checking my notes and the casebooks only occasionally. Damned if it didn't work. The exams seemed to write themselves when the time came.

Awesome. I was literally just explaining this exact principle to my students today -- if you can write a summary of what you've learned in your own words, you've really learned it.

They still complain, though. And they really whined when I told them that they should study in the same environment in which they would be tested -- no facebook, no iPod, no TV, and get off the bed! Sit up straight at a desk and turn off the music, tell your body it's learning time. Then when you're in that exact same position in school, your brain will recognize what it's supposed to do.

The term "learned" is another concept from "listened to" or "read about". Learned things are by definition memory accessible at will. Memory access IS the mind's capacity to form connections. Nuff said.

I went to public school in the old country. We were assigned written problems in math and physics to be turned in weekly and written themes or essays every other week. In ink, not pencil, and the "What I did on my Summer Vacation" alternative was an automatic C max.In the classroom, the teacher would spend the first 10 minutes spot checking to see if we had read the textbook assignment, then go on to expound on material not in the textbook(s).At exam time, we were responsible for it all, in the books or not. Graduating from high school, the final exam grade in each course was the final grade, and the exams covered the entire 5 years, including courses that were not taught in the last 2 or 3 years.

We also had other things to do, such as skiing, swimming, and soccer, not to mention girls, etc., so we learned to study.

I could not believe it when I started college in this country and found the professors wasting time by spoonfeeding material already covered in the textbooks.

Actually, new studies show that it's more effective to study in a variety of places, not just a designated study spot, because the different surroundings cause the information you acquire there to be more widely distributed/associated across your brain.

Pogo--Tom Lehar must have written something about calculus--other than that the only song I know that references calculus is "I am the very model of a modern major general." Gilbert and Sullivan of course.

First you need to get the students' attention.Example of this occurred in WW2 when two sets of troops were given a lecture in Italian architecture. The group that was told it was important because that German snipers would be hiding in and on top of the buildings did much better.WV: evali

kk, I'm not talking so much about physical location as removing distractions and having a "study stance" the same way baseball players have stances in the batter's box. If you're slumped on your bed with your iPod blaring, facebook on one side and the tv just behind the notebook propped up on your lap, chances are you aren't going to retain much of anything that you're "studying" at the time.